


Pull and Push

by the5leggedCricket



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5927428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the5leggedCricket/pseuds/the5leggedCricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Elster is not a bad man. In fact, he likes to believe that he is the best man that he can possibly be. He would do anything for his family and always will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull and Push

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgentSleeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentSleeper/gifts).



> When I asked [Aggy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/argentsleeper) why the hell Leo would walk around with a wound like that instead of getting it stitched and how he even got the wound in the first place, she came up with this brilliant idea. So all credits go to her and her beautifully dark mind.
> 
> Thank you, [Polo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Polomonkey/pseuds/Polomonkey), for betaing this and putting up with my non-stop complaining in general. I have no idea why you haven't blocked me yet.

David Elster is not a bad man. In fact, he likes to believe that he is the best man that he can possibly be. He would do anything for his family and always will.

So when Beatrice gets gravely ill, he sells the house, pulls Leo out of school, and moves them into a new house in the middle of nowhere in a matter of weeks, instead of abandoning her like so many would do. The house is perfect; the remote location provides them with the peace and quiet Beatrice needs to recover, and there’s more than enough room for David to set up his personal work space and laboratorium. He’s free to work on the perfect formula and to tinker without anyone looking over his shoulder.

In the meantime, Leo and Beatrice have the opportunity to tighten their bond. Since Beatrice has fallen ill, their relationship has gotten a bit strained, Leo not understanding why his mother is behaving so strangely and distant. However, David is sure that if there is one person who can bring Beatrice back, it’s Leo. And the hired help can take care of them both, so David locks himself up into his room for days on end.

Now that neither Edwin or George are there to help with the research, he makes slow progress. However, David has sufficient motivation. Beatrice is having more and more attacks, bouts of confusion where she’s convinced that David is an enemy that has locked her up. He didn’t miss the look on Leo’s face, seated on the stair, as he watched how Beatrice cried and yelled hysterically during her latest attack. Leo is slowly withdrawing into himself, and David knows that he needs a proper mother figure.

So David works day and night, perfecting rows and rows of code, until one day, long after the letters and symbols have started haunting him in his dreams, he’s created a programme for the perfect mother. Building the synth by hand is but a matter of weeks. Not once does he leave his chambers during this time, but in the end, it’s worth it.

His son is worth it.

Mia is worth it.

Yet, Beatrice’s condition is only worsening and she needs constant supervision. David hires carers for her, who keep her away from Leo. Leo, who, for in the first time in forever is looking happy again, with someone to look up to. David knows that he’s no longer his son’s role model—he’d ruined that, _sacrificed_  it when he’d been absent for too long to make Mia.

Still, he tries spending some time with Leo, but soon the pull of his laboratorium becomes too strong and he finds himself elbows deep in a new model or behind the computer to experiment some more with the code.

David wouldn’t say that he neglects his family. Sure, he doesn’t see them much for a few years, but it’s all for them. He builds his son a whole new family to make up for the lack of a mother who can love him in the way she’s supposed to, and he makes sure his wife can be cared for herself without having to focus on anything else but getting better. Everything he does is with them in mind.

And then Beatrice kidnaps Leo

And Leo dies.

He doesn’t know how long it takes to revive Leo, breaking his ribs in the effort to get his heart beating again, but it’s too long. His heart might be thumping, and his chest rising and falling steadily with the air that is pumped into his lungs, but the damage to his brain is considerable.

For months, David puts himself through hell, building a second brain to take over what has been lost. It’s sickly fascinating, trying to apply his synth tech on a human, but at the same time, it’s _his son_ , who he has done everything for so far. Now that David has finally built Leo a whole family to give him everything he needs, it’s unbearable to even consider that it might all have been for nothing, that Leo could die.

So he perseveres, stops seeing his son as a person who’s in a coma and starts to think of him as just another project.

The synths assist with their steady hands and cold logic.

Beatrice is in a freezer, waiting to be David’s next miracle.

Everyone else is gone.  
  
**  
  
“You what?! How _could_ you?”

The look on Leo’s face shatters his heart. Their family is finally complete. David, who is practically God-like with his ability to create life when he wishes so. Leo, healthy and happy, or so he thought. Beatrice, alive and improved, with no illness that can ever come between them anymore. And the synths, who have become Leo’s second family. This is everything David has been working towards for years. What he’s given everything up for…

...because he’s the best man he could possibly be…

...he’d do anything for family…

...and now Leo is rejecting it?

_Why?_

“How could you do this to her? Trapping her i-in... “ Leo gestures wildly in Beatrice’s direction before spitting out, “She’s not real! Mum died more than a year ago! ”

David takes a hesitant step forward, reaching a hand towards Leo. “But I did this for you, Leo. You—”

“For me?” He looks incredulous, shocked. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he finds his voice again. “Let me guess, turning me into this-this thing was also for me?”

“Yes!”

Leo bites out a harsh laugh. “You turned me into a monster! I’m a monster, David! I hate what you’ve turned me into. I never asked for this. You don’t have any idea what it’s like, do you? I’m a freak. You trapped me into a mind that isn’t mine, and now you’ve gone and trapped my mother into a body that isn’t hers. I wish you’d have let us die!”

And that’s a slap in his David’s face. He stumbles back and crashes into Beatrice, who steadies him and looks at him, waiting for his instructions. David wants to vomit. Beatrice would never have looked at him like that. If she was anything like how she’d been in the last ten years, she would be confused, or angry, or terrified. She’d look around bewildered, or she’d push him off of her, or she’d start screaming until her voice was too raw to continue. Maybe even then.

What has he done?

The woman David married is gone. His son is his only family left. And he wants to be dead.

David turns around and runs towards his laboratorium. Papers fly up in the air before drifting towards the ground. A table crashes against the wall, groaning in protest. One of the computers dies with a loud bang as he smashes his fist in it.

The pain in his wrist clears his mind somewhat. He never accepted Beatrice for who she was after her mental illness, and now he’s gone and done the same to his son, refusing to even think about what he might be like if he ever woke from his coma. His survival chances were slim but they _existed_.

Leo never asked to be turned into a mutant. How could he love himself if his father couldn’t even love him in whatever shape he might have woken up in?

David could right this. He would.

He makes to go back to the living room, and then he spots Leo standing in the doorway, tears trickling down his cheeks. He grabs Leo by his shoulders, shaking him as he speaks.

“Leo, Leo. I can fix this. I’m gonna fix this and then you take care of them, yeah? You keep your family safe, son, make sure no one can find them. I fucked up, I fucked up. Let me fix this.”

He drags Leo towards the work table in the middle of the room and, when Leo makes no move, pulls him on top of it. Leo doesn’t struggle, he seems to have gone into shock. David’s glad, it makes it easier.

“I need to sedate you for the pain. It’s going to hurt a lot, but it’s all for the best. When you wake up you will be human again.”

David starts crying himself now, and with trembling hands he strokes Leo’s face, brushing away the wetness.

“Dad? What is going on?” Leo’s voice is small and he sounds lost. David wishes he could comfort him somehow, but the only thing he has got left to give is redemption, his son’s humanity.

Not trusting his hands to stick a needle into his son’s body, David pours some chloroform onto a rag and shoves it in Leo’s face before he can change his mind.

Leo’s body sags.

David rucks up Leo’s shirt and finds the port neatly embedded into the skin on his left side. He picks up a knife and roughly cuts the port out, exposing the wires underneath.

David can’t think. His head is a swirl of emotions, and when he tries to think he gets lost, wanders in circles and then realises he’s forgotten what he was trying to figure out in the first place. Right now there’s only one thought shining brightly enough to reach him through the fog. _Hurry, fix this_ now _!_

He grabs the wires and pulls with all his might.   
  
**   
  
They all understand the concept of and the need for privacy. Yet, Max wants to be there for Leo and after exactly six hundred seconds he follows Leo upstairs. Ten minutes is already way longer than he expected Leo to talk to his father, and it’s with great surprise that he notes that there isn’t any shouting either. So, Max walks to the open door of David’s lab to check on them.

If he had a heart, he’s sure it would stop right now. Leo is lying limply on a steel table and David is bent over him, hands covered in blood, pulling at the wires that are keeping Leo alive. David is killing Leo, but Max can’t let that happen. Leo is his brother, they’re family!

Max shouts, to scare David away, to wake Leo, to alarm his siblings… He doesn’t really know, but it works and David looks up, startled. He’s in the way of Max saving his brother, though, so in four strides Max crosses the room and pushes him out of the way, feeling more Synth than he ever has as he lets logic and efficiency reign. His left hand is already prodding inside the wound, looking for internal damage, while his right hand is reaching for a towel to stop the bleeding.

Fred enters the room along with Mia and Niska, and he assists Max, handing him the tools he needs to put everything back in place. But he raises a hand to stop him from stitching the gaping, ugly wound closed when he asks for a thread and needle.

“Leo still needs to be able to charge. Leave it. We’ll bandage it.”

So Max does. He bandages Leo, pulls his shirt back over the starch white, and makes sure he’s as comfortable as can be for when he wakes.

When he pulls his eyes off Leo, the others are looking at him with unreadable expressions.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and then Mia steps aside, revealing David lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, next to the desk he hit his head on.

“Leo can never know,” Niska says. Her voice is devoid of any emotion, but her face is shifting into an emotion that resembles relief. “We’ll tell him that David committed suicide, that he couldn’t handle the guilt.”

Max nods numbly. He did this. He’s responsible, and to have taken a human life feels horrible, but the thought of Leo looking at him like he’s a killer is even worse. Unbearable. “You’re right. Leo can never know.”

Max is a murderer now, and he might never be worth Leo’s love, but he also knows that Leo needs him and the truth would kill him. So, for Leo’s sake, they have to keep it a secret. The guilt is already weighing him down, and Max is not sure how he can bear to carry this burden alone, but he knows he will find a way. For Leo. Because Leo is family and for his family, Max would do anything.

**Author's Note:**

> All and any feedback is welcome!


End file.
